Solving the Cold Start Problem (w/ Andrew Chen)
Noah Kagan Presents
Noah Kagan
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2021
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andrew Chen is a general partner at a16z where he invests in consumer startups and marketplaces.
He is also one of my oldest best friends and played a MAJOR role in the success of my company Appsumo.
His new book, The Cold Start Problem, is dropping on December 7th.
In the book, he shares the core secrets of starting and scaling tech startups after interviewing CEOs from companies like Zoom, Twitch, and Slack
Show notes: https://okdork.com/podcast/227
Use this link to get 10% off at checkout on AppSumo: https://appsumo.com/?coupon=noah10&code=noah10
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | These marketplace companies are always in a world where we're trying to balance the needs of one side versus the other. |
| 0:04.8 | All the things that people complain to me about with Uber was always like, |
| 0:08.6 | well, why can't I pay zero dollars, have the driver wait for me for an hour until I'm ready to go outside and then when I get outside and I sit in the car I want them to like have like you know lemon infused like ice water for me ready and it's like yeah but like you're not the actual |
| 0:25.0 | customer like the driver is the actual customer of the business and we need to |
| 0:28.9 | make sure that they're very happy about that too because what they're telling us is |
| 0:31.7 | why can't we charge customers $100 and if they cancel they |
| 0:35.3 | get charged $1,000 and by the way we should be able to show up however late we want and by the way |
| 0:40.4 | if there's a customer that's close to us we want to pick them up and just cancel the order, right? |
| 0:44.8 | It's like, you know, you're trying to balance the two sides. |
| 0:46.8 | And so I think my question with anything that feels like it's too good of a deal |
| 0:50.4 | is, is it favoring one side of the network versus the other in such a way that it hurts the long-term prospects of the business. |
| 0:56.0 | What is up you beautiful bastards? It is your boy, Batman, |
| 1:01.0 | aka Rabbi Kanlows, aka Noah Kagan. In today's episode I talked to my very good friend |
| 1:05.3 | Andrew Chen. Now this is actually a private behind-the-scenes conversation of a talk he gave at |
| 1:10.1 | my company ap sumo.com. Now if you don't know Andrew he's a general partner at |
| 1:14.0 | A16 Z he's invested in sub stack clubhouse and a bunch of other companies including |
| 1:18.2 | Apsoo he has a new book out called The Cold Start Problem. He helped me grow Appome to where it is today. The book is |
| 1:24.2 | dropping December 7th. I highly recommend you check it out. The book has a |
| 1:27.2 | bunch of great examples about how to get a company started when you've got |
| 1:30.6 | nothing. Check it out Coldstar.com, highly recommended. In this conversation you learn got nothing. Check it out, Coldstar.com, highly recommended. |
| 1:33.4 | In this conversation you'll learn three gigantic things. Number one, |
| 1:36.1 | how billion-dollar tech companies were started using network effects. Number two, |
... |
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